"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." –Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
In the last decades of the 20th century, some Engineering veterans began to discuss the perils and pitfalls of their industry. As they shared data with one another, they began to see that traditional projects were failing industry-wide more than 80%[i] of the time. Rigidity and expense were increasing even as customers were demanding more flexibility and lower costs. But while most of the industry was failing to deliver in this changing landscape, some teams rose to the challenge and even exceeded expectations. The study of these remarkable teams sparked a cultural wildfire that has been sweeping around the world, increasing productivity, flexibility and accuracy for the last twenty years.
It all began with two simple questions: How does a single organization give rise to both "rock star" and "average" teams? And can average teams be coached toward rock star performance? In order to answer their questions, this group of researchers undertook a series of studies that would evaluate the highest performing Engineering organizations around the world. A few of the more recognizable names among those studied were DuPont, Toyota, Nokia, Intel, iRobot, Borland, IBM and Xerox. The researchers collected and combed over data for years, reaching back in some cases as far as fifty years. Eventually, behavioral and cultural patterns began to emerge for those projects deemed most successful by the sponsoring organizations. The data, interviews and observations also began to suggest a surprisingly short but consistent list – just twelve points long – that defined the roles, ceremonies, artifacts and behaviors shared by these teams. Though deceptively simple in its brevity, and having been confirmed by real world observations, the publication of the twelve point list in 1986[ii] sparked controversy throughout the industry and inspired a flurry of competing studies around the world.
Among the most controversial points suggested by this brief list of best practices was the notable absence of some traditional roles, practices and artifacts. Even the original researchers had taken these for granted as essential when they began the study but there was no denying the evidence. More than just "missing", they found that these roles and artifacts actually shared an inverse relationship to the team's ability to become hyper-productive. Regardless of the product scope or duration, the more present they were on a team, the less likely the team would become hyper-productive. Project Management, Program Management, traditional project tracking tools and the ubiquitous command-and-control structure of most corporations had been either eliminated or distributed across altogether new roles as these teams evolved toward hyper-productivity.
It wasn't immediately clear to the researchers how the organizational needs were being met with these surprising omissions but understanding this would be essential if they were to develop the truly portable set of standards they hoped to describe. So, as Scientists do, they undertook a series of trials to test not only the portability of the list but to simultaneously test the necessity of each of the points. Could the list be reduced to just nine points? Were six sufficient? To find out, the researchers approached several organizations that were using traditional methodologies and, showing them the data they had collected, convinced them to participate in the experimental application of these best practices to their teams.
The first trial included only teams with an established reputation as reliable producers. From their ranks, a few were defined as control teams that would continue business as usual. The largest subset would be asked to apply varying subsets of the twelve point list while only a few were asked to strictly adhere to all twelve best practices. At the end of the trial, the results were even more astonishing than the researchers had hoped.
Not surprisingly, the teams who continued business as usual had their normal rate of value contribution. The teams who had used subsets of the twelve point list had maintained or only slightly improved their productivity. But the teams who strictly applied all twelve points were found to be, on average, 240% more productive[iii] than they had been just six months before. What's more, employee turn-over had plummeted, customer satisfaction had risen dramatically and employees noted a remarkable improvement in corporate culture for those organizations that complied fully.
In the intervening twenty years since the first studies were conducted, thousands of organizations around the world have adopted the twelve rules and built additional best practices on top of them. Some of these organizations are now achieving five to ten times the industry standard in productivity, while hybrid models and traditional methodologies top out at their original level of productivity.
The researchers, by the way, included Deming, Takeuchi, Nonaka, Ogannaike, Beck and, of course, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber. This set of best practices distilled from their collective research was first published in 1986 by Takeuchi and Nonaka in a Harvard Business Journal article titled "The New New Product Development Game", wherein they were first referred to collectively as Scrum.
[i] Using traditional Project Management methodologies and artifacts, projects of one million lines of code or more fail to meet expectations and customer needs between 70-85% of the time. See PA Consulting Group, 85% of IT Projects FailStandish Group Report on www.SDTimes.com. and the
[ii] The New New Product Development Game, Harvard Business Review, January 1, 1986, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Ikujiro Nonaka.
[iii] See the Softhouse paper, Scrum in Large Organizations
